I certainly hope the President won't say that the police acted "stupidly," because that would only get these two Pigs an invitation to the White House Lawn, for some German beer.

Instead, Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States of America, should investigate whether wheelchair-bound Americans must be dragged out of their wheelchairs and thrown onto the ground, with their faces slammed against the pavement, in the process of arresting them. Why not just frisk them and call for a police van?

In the age of the Internet, our America "freedoms" are visible all over the world. This was not a good day for freedom. That's what the world thinks as the view this video.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A list of known torture victims that died after being intentionally electrocuted.Most of these torture deaths resulted from being shocked with a Taser brand electronic torture device. A few were tortured and died from being electrocuted with another brand of electrical torture device19831. August 10, 1983, Vincent Alvarez, 27, Los Angeles, California

2000In approximately 2000, Taser International began to replace early taser models up to the Air Taser with the M26 model and starting in 2003 by the X26. The electrical charge is different in these models so the medical reaction should differ. However the ways in which these weapons have been used did not appear to differ.48. May 14, 2000: Enrique Juarez Ochoa, 34, Bakersfield, California
49. June 29, 2000: Lawrence Frazier, Wallens Ridge, Virginia (NOT TASER- Stinger Ultron II)

Perhaps the family and their lawyers will petition for en banc (full court) review of the three-judge panel opinion, although their is no inherent right to en banc review and it is mostly granted in cases considered to be of great importance.

A San Jose, California, jury yesterday said Taser had failed to warn police in Salinas, California, that prolonged exposure to electric shock from the device could cause a risk of cardiac arrest. The jury awarded $1 million in compensatory damages and $5.2 million in punitive damages to the estate of Robert Heston, 40, and his parents. The jury cleared the police officers of any liability.

However, the District Court judge immediately threw out the punitive damages, while affirming the jury's compensatory damages finding.

4. However, the district court abused its discretion when it affirmed the jury’s compensatory damages award to the estate. While the estate presented evidence suggesting that Heston was treated by emergency medical technicians, transported to the hospital, and received continuing medical treatment, it presentedno evidence at trial showing compensable “loss or damage that the decedentsustained or incurred before death, . . . not includ[ing] any damages for pain,suffering, or disfigurement.’” County of L.A. v. Superior Court, 981 P.2d 68, 70 (Cal. 1999) (quoting Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 377.34; emphasis altered). Thus, although the trial judge had discretion to “weigh the evidence” when it considered TASER’s motion for a new trial, it abused that discretion by denying the motion where there was simply no evidence to weigh in support of the jury award. See Air-Sea Forwarders, Inc. v. Air Asia Co., 880 F.2d 176, 190 (9th Cir. 1989). We accordingly reverse and vacate the compensatory damages award.

In affirming the denial of punitive damages, the Court of Appeals found that:

Under California law, punitive damages may be awarded when a plaintiff proves by clear and convincing evidence that a defendant acted with “such a

7

conscious and deliberate disregard of the interests of others that his conduct may
be called willful or wanton.” Taylor v. Superior Court, 598 P.2d 854, 856
(Cal. 1979) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see Cal. Civ. Code
§ 3294(a). Here, TASER made efforts, albeit insufficiently, to warn its customers
about the risks posed by prolonged TASER deployment. While this may amount to negligence, it does not rise to the level “willful or wanton” conduct. Tomaselli v. Transamerica Ins. Co., 31 Cal. Rptr. 2d 433, 444 n.14 (Ct. App. 1994) (such conduct must be “inconsistent with the hypothesis that [it] . . . was the result of . . . mere negligence or other such noniniquitous human failing.”). Moreover, although the jury found that a “reasonable manufacturer” would have known that prolonged TASER deployment may cause cardiac arrest, it answered “No” to the question asking whether TASER actually “knew” of that risk. We accordingly affirm the district court’s order vacating the punitive damages award to the estate.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

I had hoped that people in the US and elsewhere would quickly forget about Bin Laden and refocus on 15% unemployment among Black American adults, and the one million of us in jails and prisons, but that refocusing doesn't seem to be happening. President Obama and the "intelligence" agencies now have an endless supply of Osama Bin Laden mementos and goodies with which to regale the media and the public, and the story will be dragged out like the equally inconsequential death of Princess Diana.

A comment by TheEvilOne prompts me to address the Bin Laden case again, only with respect to its political lessons and implications in the United States.

What strikes me is that, if indeed Bin Laden was killed, Obama had a pretty good idea of what country he was in. Readers may remember that when Senators Clinton and Obama were running for Democratic nomination, Obama successfully avoided being called "anti-war" by promising to attack targets in PAKISTAN to 'get the terrorists," with or without Pakistan's permission. Hillary Clinton said Obama's plan was immature and illegal, but Obama stuck to his drones and won the nomination.

Today, if anything that the CIA operatives are telling us on the news is true, Osama Bin Laden was, in fact, in PAKISTAN. Had it been known during the Democratic nomination primaries that Bin Laden was in Pakistan and Pakistan was refusing to cooperate with Bin Laden's capture, then both Clinton and Obama would have been compelled to talk tough about going into Pakistan. Obama promised to do it and kept his promise, while Clinton promised NOT to do it and lost the nomination to Obama.

How was Obama so fortunate as to promise to effectively invade the very country where Bin Laden was hiding? It makes Obama seem pretty smart in retrospect, but in an irrelevant sort of way, from the perspective of Black Americans and their homes in foreclosure, or already living out of their cars.

Of course, Obama has been invading foreign oil-producing countries at the average rate of one per year (Pakistan and then Libya), so we can expect him to invade six more oil-producing countries by the end of his second term. None of it will help Black people in the United States one bit.

Black people are far more afraid of their local police and the all-white juries than they are of anyone in the Middle East or Africa, and with good reason: "TheEvilOne" pointed to the following article, entitled, "The Failed Drug War Has Created a Human Rights Nightmare,"with strikingly similar facts and metaphors, like the fact that Obama-Land is not the "Promised Land," which is still out of reach, in large measure because white America targeted Black America for imprisonment and the loss of many of the rights of citizenship:

We declared a war known as the War on Drugs. The war has driven the quintupling of our prison population in a few short decades. The vast majority of the startling increase in incarceration in America is traceable to the arrest and imprisonment of poor people of color for non-violent, drug-related offenses. Families have been torn apart, young lives shattered, as parents grieve the loss of loved ones to the system, often hiding their grief under a cloak of shame. Politicians claim that the enemy in this war in is a thing -- "drugs" -- not a group of people, but the facts prove otherwise.

African Americans have been admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate up to 57 times higher than whites. In some states, 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison have been African American. The rate of Latino imprisonment has been staggering as well. Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black and Latino.

In my opinion, one million Blacks in US jails and prisons is a far more important statistic than 3,000 killed at Ground Zero. "Ground Zero" for Black people is the state prisons in the fifty states, and the felony convictions:

Millions of people in the United States, primarily poor people of color, are denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement: the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free from discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits. They have been branded "criminals" and "felons" and now find themselves relegated to a permanent, second-class status for the rest of their lives.

We feel as if we are under siege, because we are under siege. Every Black kid knows it and every Black parent and adult has fought it, but we are a minority--marginalized, repressed and imprisoned.